


between the lines

by thir13enth



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, HELLO it's me, but i'm here, it's been a while since i've showed face in this fandom, yes hello
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 16:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10574805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thir13enth/pseuds/thir13enth
Summary: sometimes you don't need words to be said out loud to hear them.—shallura, with pining.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Braincoins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Braincoins/gifts).



> a very late gift for braincoins. there was a prompt and a song to be inspired by, and i kinda loosely was inspired by them, but mostly i just wrote about growth and time and plenty of pining in between.
> 
> i hope you enjoy, socks!

Sometime between waking up this morning to a demanding alarm and crashing into Allura while rushing around the hallway corner in order to get to whatever it was that he was late for, the sudden realization that he might like Allura dawned on him.

Like — _like_ liked.

And oh what a terrible time to be found holding his chin in deep thought, especially now.

“You seem to be musing profoundly about something, Shiro.”

The sound of his name on her tongue catches him at the worst moment possible.

“Oh — Princess,” he half-stutters, half-replies. He thinks his voice cracks because he’s off guard but a quick look at everyone’s face around him and a desperate memory recall of the last five sentences exchanged in the group discussion helps him through the brief awkwardness. “Nothing at all, I was just thinking about what a good idea your plan was.”

“You think so?” Allura’s eyes glimmer. “That’s good to hear, coming from you.”

He shrugs, maybe a little stiffy, but it’s all to keep the mildly embarrassed smile on his face covered by his fingers as he watches the princess subsequently delegate various tasks to the other Paladins, to Coran, to the mice gathered at her feet, before she finally approaches him with accusing eyes and a knowing smile.

“You weren’t paying attention to a word of what was said during that meeting, did you?”

He doesn’t think he can lie to her ocean eyes. He looks down at the floor again. “If you wouldn’t mind giving me a quick recap of the summary points,” he invites.

She nods, closing her eyes to briefly go through the points in her own head before returning to meet his eyes, forgiving. She relays the information to him quickly.

“And you,” she reminds him at the end, “are to keep an eye on the right bay of the ship while we go past the comet circle.”

“Of course,” he says, then apologizes. “I’m sorry for not paying attention.”

She snorts. “That’s the second time you’ve said that to me today, Paladin.”

Oh, he is well aware. After all, he’s still replaying that same crash scene from earlier this morning in his head. He’s still thinking about how sturdy and firm her stance was, how some strands slipped out of her bun as she recoiled from his bumping into her. He’s still recalling how her eyes grew wide and concerned as she reached down immediately to grab his wrist, how she pulled him forward to keep him from falling, how his momentum knocked his torso into hers on his way up. He’s still remembering the sound of his heart skipping a beat and the sight of relief in her eyes when he got back on his two feet.

He’s still wondering since that moment if his feelings for Allura are a little more than platonic.

“Sorry,” he says again, the lightest laugh on his breath.

“Oh, no, I don’t want you to apologize. I just found it amusing,” she tells him. She crosses her arms and looks down at her feet, shuffling a bit. There’s a small smile on her face. “It would take a lot more than a small bump in the hallway to knock me over. Maybe if a xznly squiwl running 20 kilnets a quiznak bumped into me, I would fall but that’s surely not a speed that the average human can achieve — but then again, you’re not quite average, are you?”

Her long-winded remark suddenly makes him laugh, and upon hearing his laugh, she joins in. Their laughter dies off a while after, and her gaze turns serious.

“Shiro,” she asks, with concern. “You got distracted once we began speaking of the Galrans. What were you thinking about?”

He opens his mouth, and then closes it.

Usually she was right. She was keen to his distracted mind and she always seemed to notice when even the smallest intrusive thoughts interrupted him.

The last time she asked what he was thinking, he was thinking about Kerberos, and thinking about how he ended up being the Black Paladin in the first place. Allura caught him when he feeling so guilty he almost couldn’t handle it, and at that the time, she listened to everything he needed to get off his chest.

But this time she’s asking what he’s thinking, and all he’s thinking is about taking her hand, about hugging her, about making her laugh, about all the things that close friends do, about all the excuses he tries to find to do just these things — and if this all means anything more than… well, whatever they were.

“Oh…nothing,” he finally says.

And maybe it’s the shy glint in his eyes, or maybe it’s something in the way she feels about him too, but she doesn’t press further, instead offering him a gentle smile.

“You think too much, Shiro,” she tells him. She puts her hand on his opposite shoulder, turns her head to face him before she leaves. “Next time tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I will,” he replies. He thinks he can spend entire nights just looking into her eyes.

“I promise.”

.

.

She’s done greater things before — heal an entire crumbling planet, conjure wormholes extending from one end of the universe to the other, fight off a troop of Galrans with her bare hands — but Shiro can’t help his worry when she stands from her seat aside him in the Black Lion.

He can’t turn away from the steering wheel but he needs to see her before she goes. He looks up and watches her in the reflection of the windshield as she steps towards the back of the Lion’s control room, where the Lion’s space pod is docked. Her hand hovers over a red eject button, and she braces herself.

“Princess?” he asks out loud, just before her hand comes down.

She looks up and meets his eyes in the reflection in the glass. “Shiro,” she replies, with a gentle smile.

“Stay safe,” he tells her.

“Of course.”

He doesn’t know what else to say in these last two seconds before she leaves, and it’s his deepest regret that he can’t see her go.

He has to keep his eyes ahead of him to keep from driving off course, and it’s the deepest regret that he can’t turn around to see her go or even give her a reassuring smile before he hears the space pod’s door slide shut with a whoosh.

He holds his breath as he sees her press the button, as door to the space pod opens, as she climbs into the capsule.

Then the doors slides shut with a whoosh.

He doesn’t breathe again.

Not until he hears the click of the space pod attaching back onto the Black Lion, not until he hears the pressure of the moving air as the capsule opens, not until he hears her deep exhale as she steps out and back into the cockpit.

And this time, he turns away from the steering wheel. This time he puts Black on automatic, and he swivels his head around to look back at her, stands up as if he never expected to see her again — and now there she is standing before him, like a miracle.

She pulls the helmet off her head, then shakes her hair out, letting the silver strands fall over her shoulders. She tucks her helmet under her arm and then looks up at him. She gives him a big smile and makes her way toward him.

“Shiro,” she greets him, stopping just before him. Drops of sweat line her forehead and her eyebrows are furrowed with fatigue, but she has never looked more strong and powerful.

“I knew you could do it, Princess,” he tells her.

“Thank you for believing in me,” she replies, and then she suddenly brings him tight into her arms.

Either he doesn’t expect it or he’s not ready for it. Nevertheless, his heart stops in the same way it did the very first day he met her. Steadily, his hands rise from his sides and returns the embrace.

“Your encouragement means a lot to me, you know,” she murmurs. He can tell her lips are somewhere over his shoulder, because her voice tickles the very bottom of his ear.

“My encouragement?” he asks. He resists the urge to turn his head to her. “I never told you anything.”

“Yes,” she replies. “But I just knew. Even if you didn’t say a word, I could feel it. I could feel you telling them that I could do it. And it’s that feeling that got me through. All I wanted was to get back to you to say that I did it. And that was enough for me.”

He pulls away from her and looks at her. Her eyes aren’t looking forward at a distance — she’s only focused on him before her — yet her eyes looks starry as if she’s looking light-years far into the galaxy.

A tick passes. Maybe two. Then she blinks and tries to laugh the moment off.

“I don’t know if you can comprehend any of that,” she suddenly says, looking down and shaking her head. She pulls away from him, rests her hands at her sides. “My thoughts aren’t making sense.”

And maybe it’s in the way she says it, or in the way her arms were wrapped around him, or in the way she was looking at him like she thought she would never see his eyes again  — but he suddenly thinks he recognizes the feeling.

“No, I understand,” he tells her.

Then after a moment, he adds, “I know.”

It’s then that their eyes meet again.

“You _know_?” Her eyes sparkle, her eyebrow raises. “What _exactly_ do you think you know?”

There’s a moment there where he can tell that she knows that he knows that she knows. There’s a moment there that wants him to close the gap between them — either the one between their lips or the one between their unsaid words or the one between their minds, questioning if their feelings are actually aligned.

She’s daring. She’s trying. He can feel her buzzing with excitement for him to just say the words — but maybe it’s his own unsteady heart, and maybe it’s his own imagination, and he prepares the confession on his tongue and he readies himself to lay all of his emotions bare and he finally confesses —

“—you definitely want to get back to the Castle as soon as possible so you can go eat more of Coran’s wonderful cooking,” he says, with a wry smile.

“Oh,” she replies, looking down to hide an embarrassed smile. She rolls her eyes. “Of course.”

.

.

“Can I talk to you for a moment, Shiro?”

He can hear her concern in her voice. It’s hidden and tucked away under the confident undertones of her words but somewhere between her furrowed eyebrows and the small shake of the paper she holds between her hands.

He knows it right away. “What’s wrong, Princess?”

She doesn’t raise her eyes from the paper.

“It’s my father,” she tells him after a second. “It’s a confession.”

She tilts the paper down toward him. He doesn’t know how to read Altean, but he knows that whatever is written there is not something she ever expected to uncover. He slowly turns to face the same direction she is, slowly standing closer to her, slowly letting her lean into his shoulder.

“He planned this,” she explains. “He planned this all. The Lions, the Castle, my ten-thousand years, his _death—_ “

She breaks into a sob here. He catches her as she falls. She shakes in his arms and she crumples the papers in her hands and she curls into a ball on the floor.

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell me,” she whimpers. “We could have avoided all of this. It didn’t have to be this way. Stupid, stupid father!”

She slowly unwinds down in front of him — her composure unfolding until all that was left of her was her broken heart and tears. He holds her. He holds her together like she’s cracking and like it would only take the smallest gust of wind to completely break her.

And then, she slowly builds herself back up together. Her shaking stops. Her tears fall back. Her breathing deepens. She stands up from the floor — he helps her along the way, and she holds onto his arms tight. She needs his support now more than ever.

“I can’t believe he didn’t tell me,” she repeats softly.

“M-Maybe he didn’t feel it was the right time,” he suggests, cautiously.

He immediately regrets his words because they trigger something in her.

“It’s _always_ the right time,” she immediately retorts, growing more and more angry by the word. “Certainly much better than telling me now after all of _this_ has happened.”

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes.

Her eyes flicker up, realizing that she’s snapped.

“No, no,” she says, mollified, still holding his arms tight. “Thank you. Thank you for comforting me.”

“I’m here for you,” he says.

Forever — is what he almost adds to the end of his sentence, but then he sees her wipe a tear from the edge of her eyes.

She’s crying. She’s crying, and it’s because she misses her father and her planet and her everything that was before the universe completely turned on its heel and she ended up with her kingdom’s legacy on her shoulders and an intergalactic rebellion at the command of her unsteady hand.

Forever — is what he wants to promise, but there’s so much on their minds, so much responsibility on their agendas, so much history in their nightmares that he doesn’t want to add their relationship, their hearts, their emotions to the entire mix of things.

They’re handling so many things already. They’re already stretched thin between their responsibilities. Adding her to his and his to hers seems heavy. And even if they already are that way, he doesn’t want to risk her — _them_ , the two of them _together_ — to ever feel like a burden.

Forever — is the word that he’s been holding at the base of his heart, the word that he holds at the end of every breath when he faces her and sees her ocean blue eyes so clear so beautiful so strong that he just wants to let it off his tongue but —

it’s not quite the right time.

There’s a flicker of disappointment that sparks over his heart when he realizes that the right time will probably be a long way to come, but he thinks it’s fine as long as she knows just by the way he looks at her or just by the way he smiles when she’s nearby — he thinks it’s okay because by the time it’s right, he’s going to be telling her things that she already very well knows.

“I hate secrets,” she says. “I hate it when things are kept from me.”

“I’m sorry,” he replies.

He just embraces her for now. He lets her tears fall on his suit and he makes sure that she returns to her room safely. He tells her that he’s just down the hall if she needs him and he tells her that it’s okay if she needs time for herself.

But her words bounce back and forth in his mind.

He thinks about the words that he’s kept from her and he wonders if they have the same gravity as the ones she was crying about. He doesn’t think they do, but after seeing her tears, he feels all the more uncertain about keeping his words to himself.

The guilt bothers him through the night, and then the next one, and then the other after that — until finally one night he catches her alone in the solarium before she retreats to her bedroom.

“I have something to confess to you,” he tells her.

“Wha… What?” she asks him, confused. Her eyes flicker over his eyes to read him. “Tell me what?”

Suddenly they’re coming closer. Suddenly they’re a step apart. Suddenly their hands are together and their heads are tilted toward each other.

“But I have to be honest,” he continues, heavily. “I don’t think this is the right time.”

Her lips are parted, and there’s something she wants to say. He knows she’s thinking about when she told him about how she felt about not knowing something she felt she needed to know. He knows she’s thinking about why he — after knowing how she felt about that all — is choosing to keep a secret from her.

But ah, this is where it’s different.

Because he’s not keeping a secret from her at all. Because she knows just as well as he does what he wants to confess.

“I promise I’ll tell you one day,” he says. “Maybe when…” and he looks up and all around them at the starry space sky, “…all of _this_ is over.”

She nods, then looks down at her hand in his, his hand in hers, and she looks up at him with a knowing smile. “Okay,” she agrees.

It’s a promise he doesn’t forget.

**Author's Note:**

> i really wanted to explore the tension of not being in a relationship for practical reasons because of the many duties that they hold. hence "we will be glorious" with an emphasis on the future tense.


End file.
